New Clinic to tackle outpatient waiting list at Galway hospitals

GALWAY University Hospitals has introduced a new Musculoskeletal Clinic to assist with the management of orthopaedic waiting lists as part of a national initiative to improve the waiting time for this speciality. The new clinic is being run by two Clinical Specialist Physiotherapists who hold the clinic on the Merlin Park University Hospital site five days a week and are seeing 50 new patients per week. The patients attending are assessed by the physiotherapists, are given a management plan, start treatment or if necessary are referred on to other services such as Occupational Therapy, Podiatry or Pain Management. Similarly if the patients require Orthopaedic Services the relevant tests are carried out and the patients are put in contact with the most appropriate consultant speciality within Orthopaedics. The new clinic started at the beginning of July and along with other initiatives aimed at reducing the outpatient waiting list, significant improvements in the length of time that patients are waiting have been seen already. The Orthopaedic waiting list has reduced by 55 weeks since the clinic started and so far 239 patients have been seen. Tony Canavan, Chief Operating Officer, Galway and Roscommon University Hospital Group said, 'We have reduced our inpatient waiting list from 9,901 in January to 1,513 as of August 16 â€â€ these are patients who would have breached the national target of being treated within nine months if not seen by the end of September and we are on track to meet this target. 'We have to address the waiting lists for Outpatient appointments in a similar way. The Department of Health's Special Delivery Unit launched a national initiative in March to deal with outpatient waiting lists. The SDU have not yet set the targets for waiting for OPD appointment, however in preparation we have already started working on action plans to reduce the waiting time using the resources of all the hospitals in the Group. The new Musculoskeletal Clinic is a good example of where we are making progress already.'